1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an autogenous bone and cell trap or filter and harvesting system and, more particularly, to a filter capable of collecting autogenous bone and precursor bone cells that are suctioned from a surgical bone site during a surgical procedure and can be harvested for future use, or use during the procedure, to help regenerate bone. This bone "slurry" may be used alone, or in combination with allografts, alloplasts or xenografts.
2. Description of Related Art
Various surgical procedures performed upon a patient result in fluid, solids and other bodily by-products being deposited in the body generally or mouth specifically of the patient. For example, the common ora/maxillofacial procedure for insertion of dental implants often results in the production and deposit of saliva, water, blood, amalgam and other tooth or root fragments and/or autogenous bone in the mouth of the patient. For health and sanitary reasons, it is generally desirous to continually remove these by-products through suction throughout the procedure in order to the improve the observation of the surgical site by the surgeon and to avoid infection which can occur if these objects are permitted to remain in the area adjacent to the surgical site or body of the patient.
Accordingly, aspirators are commonly employed to continuously remove by-products produced during oral/maxillofacial and general surgical and non-surgical procedures. An aspirator is typically embodied as a narrow-tipped, hand held tube connected to a flexible hose. The hose is attached to an electric motor driven suction system which draws air through the hose forming a vacuum, such that the tip of the hand-held tube continuously removes the undesirable solid, liquid and gaseous by-products resident at the surgical or other procedure site in the patient's mouth or body.
Though many of the products removed from the patient's body during these procedures are infectious and generally undesirable, osseous materials, such as autogenous bone, are an exception. Autogenous bone carries gross bone particles, stem cells and other blood elements necessary for regeneration of new bone. Accordingly, the separation and collection of the autogenous bone (also known as "bone harvesting") resulting from surgical, medical and dental procedures is a desirable goal.
The types of bone harvesting devices presently available utilize an existing aspirator system in conjunction with a filtering device to capture autogenous bone traveling in the air flow induced by the suction system. One such filter comprises a solid, non-transparent body which connects directly to the aspirator tip and traps osseus bone in an enclosed mesh basket. The autogenous bone is thereafter collected by scraping the basket to dislodge the autogenous bone. Because of the basket shape of the mesh, it is difficult to remove all of the autogenous bone captured in the mesh. Also, because the body of the filter is non-transparent, it is impossible to know when the mesh basket has reached its capacity in instances where a large amount of autogenous bone is collected. Other bone harvesting devices utilize generally flat, peel-back mesh filter elements. (See U.S. Pat. No. 5,766,134 issued to Arab) Such devices can be used only once and are difficult to sterilize, subject to clogging and contamination with bad elements that would normally pass through the filter and are therefore costly to utilize.